The Reading Room

Prince North Læraðr

12:05 AM

Anyhow, I go to sleep because it is 1 am here

farewell!

Bookworm

1:06 AM

0

Q: more familiar to reason than to the imagination

The following is an extract of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What does the boldfaced phrase mean? Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to reas...

CowperKettle

1:38 AM

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” (Oscar Wilde)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr It's 06:38 am here :)

Good morning!

verbose

1:59 AM

@CowperKettle you are exactly 12 hrs ahead of me, it seems

Rand al'Thor

6:27 AM

@verbose Hey, me too :-)

verbose

🦆🍽️

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Harp, you say?

Celtic Woman - Isle of Inisfree

►

@verbose :-D

verbose

True story

Tsundoku

3:20 PM

@Bookworm Less familiar to reason than to the HNQ.

@verbose He'll say it's all real except the part about baseball: “In the big inning…”

> Why did Noah have to punish and discipline the chickens on the Ark?
They were using fowl language.

> Did Eve ever have a date with Adam?
No, just an apple.

Henry WH Hack v3.0

(%100 NOT preaching here) The Bible didn't said it was an apple.

Yes I know Tsundoku post was a joke, BTW.

Tsundoku

I know. That's a European meme.

A date would actually be more plausible than an apple ;-)

I was going to post a question asking what the origin was of the apple as the "forbidden fruit", but that information is already easily available: 'Paradise Lost': How The Apple Became The Forbidden Fruit and Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple by Yadin-Israel.

Gareth Rees

4:12 PM

"And al was for an appil, an appil that he tok, As clerkes fyndyn wretyn in here book"

Spagirl

4:43 PM

@GarethRees oooh, I've got that on my phone, being sung by The Sixteen. ::toddles off for a listen::

Gareth Rees

5:06 PM

DLosc

5:56 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I have a coworker who plays the harp. I though it was cool, but I didn't realize I should have been seriously impressed.

@verbose When I was young, I told my parents I'd like to play the flute. My mom said, "How about a recorder first?" Good choice. I didn't stick with it very long.

Rand al'Thor

6:37 PM

@Tsundoku Even if it's already available, might be nice to have it on our site in an easily accessible Q&A format.

verbose

7:51 PM

@Tsundoku ha

@Spagirl does "spagirl" mean "the young female-identified person of the hot springs" or "pasta in real life"? Or possibly both, I've been wondering.

@DLosc so what did you end up playing?

DLosc

@verbose I dabble in piano, but I'm not a very accomplished musician of any kind.

verbose

@DLosc well, as @PrinceNorthLæraðr pointed out, the piano is a percussion instrument, and as the old joke goes: "What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians? A percussionist"

@Randal'Thor Agreed. Go on, Christophe, time for an ask and self-answer

Gareth Rees

Perhaps it's significant that both occurrences of "apple" in Paradise Lost are in the dialogue of Satan, whereas in the dialogue of Adam and Eve, and in the narrative, Milton writes "fruit".

verbose

well, "apple" is easier to scan than "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil". The former is an easily identified trochee, the latter an unholy mess of iambs and anapests

or anapæsts

And it's hypercatalectic to boot

it's one of those things that bothers me, that "iamb" and "dactyl" are trochees, while "anapest" is a dactyl. "Trochee" is the only correctly-named foot, IMO

Rand al'Thor

8:15 PM

@verbose Spelling, punctuation, and grammar in real life?

(I've seen SPAG as an edit description)

Mar 24, 2021 at 7:15, by verbose

Is Spagirl:
a. a young woman (or pre-woman) associated with a resort or hot spring (spa + girl)
b. someone who is pasta offline (spag + IRL)
or some combination of the two? Inquiring minds want to know

Prince North Læraðr

8:26 PM

I'm so tired

I just got back to our hotel room

Rand al'Thor

Hope you had fun!

Prince North Læraðr

Also @Tsundoku we sang at St. Paul's Within the Walls, not Outside the Walls

St. Paul's Within the Walls

St. Paul's Within the Walls (Italian: San Paolo dentro le Mura), also known as the American Church in Rome, is a church of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe on Via Nazionale in Castro Pretorio, Rome. It was the first Protestant church to be built in Rome. Designed by English architect George Edmund Street in Gothic Revival style, it was built in polychrome brick and stone, and completed in 1880. The church contains mosaics which are the largest works of the English Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. == Construction == Building a Protestant church in Rome became possible after...

That was my bad

@Randal'Thor Thanks! It was absolutely incredible

The reverb and the resonances were glorious

@DLosc Yeah. I found out last semester that harp has so much more to it than just a plucking strings

@verbose Ha!

On that note though, piano seems to be in its own technical family under "keyboards" since that's a broader group of instruments that could include organs, celestes, harpsichord, etc.

DLosc

Hm, would "electronic" be a family as well? Thinking of theremins and synthesizers.

Prince North Læraðr

Ooh that's an interesting question

I would guess so, but that's outside the scope of my expertise to be honest

And I think it depends on what you mean by a synthesizer

A synth keyboard would fall under the "keyboard" family (like piano, organ, celesta, etc) but I guess it would be "electronic"

DLosc

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of the categorization scheme that didn't include "keyboard" and therefore called a piano "percussion" (and harpsichord, I assume, would count as "strings" because it's plucked rather than hammered?)

Prince North Læraðr

8:42 PM

Yeah

Though I'm not sure what organ counts as, I think it's winds? But to be fair, I have zero clue how organs actually work

Wikipedia also tells me that there are different kinds, which makes it more complicated xD

Okay, I need to shower I'll brb

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Biology lessons might teach you how organs actually work.

DLosc

:P

Rand al'Thor

Sir Reginald's Marvellous Organ

►

Spagirl

@verbose it means ‘the person who isn’t as young as she was when she first started using variations on that name, when she moved close to an old Victorian sulphur spring resort village, and really thinks she should get around to changing it to something more fitting for a 58 yr old who doesn’t even live there anymore’.

Prince North Læraðr

9:23 PM

@Randal'Thor Hehe

Wait Literature SE graduated beta?

Congrats!

Which users are currently thinking of running/continuing?

Hehe, I'm still the fifth highest editor in Lit

Rand al'Thor

25

Q: Literature is graduating on December 16th!

All of your hard work has paid off: We're officially graduating! The Community Managers have confirmed that as part of their ongoing work on site lifecycles, as of December 16, Literature.SE will be leaving Beta. What does this mean for us, practically? Practically? Almost nothing. We'll be losin...

discussion

More than a year ago officially, but the official graduation is no longer tied to stuff like elections and site design.

Prince North Læraðr

Ah, I think I was actually (maybe?) around for that

GEEZ I haven't posted anything on here for over two years

verbose

@Spagirl Ah. Thanks for disambiguating! But if you do in fact like bolognese (and/or if you're of the Pastafarian persuasion), you needn't change the username; you could just conceptually recapitalize from SpaGirl to SpagIRL and explain that online, you eat/worship books, but in real life, you're more of a spaghetti person.

Prince North Læraðr

Are there any big site policy changes or meta-related topics I should get caught up on? I kind of want to get back to being more involved, hopefully remember to actually log on every once in a while xD

Sorry, just being a music student means I'm really busy. I typically have about 9~13 hour days depending on the day (just from classes and ensembles), not including homework and practicing

b_jonas

@PrinceNorthLæraðr The most important part is that there'll be a moderator election where we elect permanent diamond moderators, and the mandate of current mods isn't automatically kept, we have to elect them explicitly if we wish to keep them.

Prince North Læraðr

9:34 PM

Ah

Are all our current mods planning on running?

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Tsundoku wishes not to continue any longer, alas. Rand and Mith plan on running again. Bobble is considering running. My sense is that Matt Thrower isn't set on running, but will if we end up not having enough candidates.

Prince North Læraðr

Ah, no Tsundoku :(

I would've liked to run if I more active, and more active earlier. Alas, I am very much far behind on the current status of the site

verbose

We need at least three mods. If bobble does run alongside Rand and Mith, and nobody else does, we'll have our three. If we don't have our three, Matt will run. If both bobble and Matt (and/or other candidates who may yet emerge) run such that we have more than three possibles, there will be an election

Prince North Læraðr

Mm, I see

verbose

I do want bobble to run, for any number of reasons. While I think Matt would be a fantastic mod, if bobble doesn't, I'd ask you to consider running as well; Matt is in the same time zone as Rand, and it would be very useful indeed to have a mod that's several hours removed. Mith is three hours ahead of Rand, I believe, though I can't really be sure, what with summer time and all

Prince North Læraðr

9:41 PM

I would definitely run if it meant that the site would graduate. I just don't know if I'd make a good moderator, having been out of the loop of Lit SE for so long

verbose

I'd not suggest this if I didn't have the impression that Matt isn't super keen on being a mod, he just wants to be sure we have three

Prince North Læraðr

Mm

verbose

The site has graduated. But we need three mods (not sure whether that's a workload issue or just something that is needed per SE regs to keep the site going). With Tsundoku's stepping down, we would be one short.

Prince North Læraðr

Right

verbose

I mean, yes, in theory we need a graduation election as well

Prince North Læraðr

9:43 PM

I would only run if bobble didn't choose to run. I think they'd just make a better moderator than I, and I am very busy - but I'm willing to sacrifice some time for the site

Though Matt would definitely make the better moderator

My main contribution was really just helping cleaning up tags

verbose

but the "election" part of it simply means that an election was announced. If post-announcement and when nominations close there are the necessary and sufficient number of candidates to keep the site going, and only that number, then there needn't be any voting.

Prince North Læraðr

Mm I see

verbose

Matt would indeed be an excellent mod. But we've had at least one instance where an unpleasant sitch lasted longer than it need have simply because the mods were all asleep, being in similar time zones.

Prince North Læraðr

Let me take a look at something real quick

verbose

I mean, right now, it seems like a bunch of good choices: (1) bobble runs, we end up with just bobble, Rand, and Mith as candidates, they are all appointed mods, and we have three wonderful mods + a good time zone spread. (2) bobble doesnt run, you do, same sitch. (3) Neither you nor bobble runs, Matt takes one for the team and runs, and we have a site that has the requisite number of mods + excellent mods.

(4) We have multiple (>3) candidates, we have a real election, and we end up with three elected mods. I'm sure they'll all be good, we have a nice community.

Prince North Læraðr

9:54 PM

@verbose You think I'd make a good moderator despite being afk for like 2 years?

verbose

I was afk for about that long just before the election was announced. Rand said that in the absence of other viable candidates, he was planning to ask me if I would run. So no, I very much doubt your absence would be a factor.

b_jonas

I think all four of Rand, Mith, bobble and Matt will run, and hopefully one or two serious candidates besides them, plus perhaps a foil who obviously wouldn't make a good moderator so we can feel good about our vote against them making a change, and yes, we'll end up with three good mods.

We may even get four mods to make the timezone things work and reduce their workload.

Or maybe we'll just get the fourth mod two years later in another election.

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr It would be a factor if you and bobble both ran, or if you and Matt both ran, and folks could only vote for one or the other.

Prince North Læraðr

Oh, for sure

I probably wouldn't run against bobble unless to act as a foil like b_jonas mentioned - bobble's much more active and can probably fill that time difference better than I

verbose

@b_jonas I'm not sure how that works, actually. Who decides how many mods a given site should have?

Like, is there a guideline that says, "for every n active users, you need q mods"

and are you considering running? You'd make a good mod too

Prince North Læraðr

10:00 PM

I probably won't be able to fill the sitch as well as bobble as well. I'll probably be booked on weekends until around 9:00 PM-10:00 PM, which would leave around a 4 hour gap

verbose

I mean, if b_jonas, Spagirl, Matt, bobble, Prince, etc all run (in addition to Mith and Rand), my only concern would be that those who aren't elected might feel less kindly toward the site going forward, because honestly, all those folks are so valuable and would be such good mods if we had room/need for all of them.

but the more folks run, the better

Prince North Læraðr

I personally wouldn't feel bad if I didn't get elected

@verbose Also you can just call me North :P

b_jonas

@verbose The SE overlords decide how many mods. I think how they generally do it is to get three mods elected on each site, and when it seems like there are too few mods and too much moderation work then they add another one, or if one steps down they usually add another one.

@verbose I'm not active on Lit, and more importantly, I wouldn't make for a good mod even on forums where I am active.

verbose

@b_jonas okay, I believe you.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr one of these days I need to learn the distinctions between all those forms of address. Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Your Highness, Your Eminence, Your Grace, Your Excellency, Your Lordship, etc. Granted, they're all silly, but in the sort of books I read, I guess it actually does matter whether one character says to another, "Yes, m'lord" instead of "Yes, Your Lordship", because it indicates the social and institutional status of the addressee, and that kinda goes over my head

So I guess you wanna be called "Your Northship"?

Prince North Læraðr

Hahaha

Sure :P

DLosc

10:18 PM

@Tsundoku Come to think of it, most people would agree that some parts of the Bible are fiction, and most people would agree that some parts of the Bible are factual. The point of disagreement is which parts to put in each category.

Prince North Læraðr

That's a very fair assessment actually

Gareth Rees

10:30 PM

The Bible is a mixture of genres — myths (Genesis), legal codes (Leviticus), history (Chronicles), drama (Job), wisdom literature (Proverbs), love poetry (Songs of Songs), devotional poetry (Psalms), philosophy (Ecclesiastes), prophecy (Jeremiah), and historical fiction (Esther)

verbose

@GarethRees Isn't there also an arithmetic textbook in there? Or is Numbers a songbook?

Prince North Læraðr

I'd be careful calling Genesis a myth - not only is that a point of potential contention, but some parts of Genesis would be considered history or historical fiction depending on the scholars you ask

@verbose Numbers is actually sort of an extension of Exodus

It contains the stories of Israel primarily while they were wondering through the desert

@GarethRees From a secular perspective, Genesis 11 onwards reads more like a history, I believe

Though this would largely depend on the level of scholarly consensus on things like the historicity of the Biblical patriarchs

I could be wrong on Genesis though

But I'm just not sure if one would categorize it as mythology

Tsundoku

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Ah, I didn't know St. Paul's Within the Walls. Maybe because it's too recent ("completed in 1880")? ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

Well it's definitely not as prominent as Outside the Walls :P

DLosc

@PrinceNorthLæraðr J.R.R. Tolkien would argue that it is the best kind of myth--a true one.

Prince North Læraðr

10:43 PM

hehe

Tsundoku

@verbose Is that one about the irrational number π?

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku It's also nowhere as large. It's like a normal sized chapel/church, I'd suppose. Nothing as grand as St. Peter's Basilica

b_jonas

1880 is too recent now?

Tsundoku

@PrinceNorthLæraðr :63215368 Still looks nice, though. So what did you sing there? Stravinsky's Les Noces?

Prince North Læraðr

We sang A LOT of songs

Like 15 songs

b_jonas

10:50 PM

oh! you mean that's a church? then yes, 1880 is recent

Prince North Læraðr

Yes :P

b_jonas

I thought you were talking about a book

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Schaffe in Mir Gott by Brahms, Ov'e Lass il Bel Viso by Lauridsen, Holy Radiant Light by Gretchaninoff were some of my favorites

Tsundoku

@b_jonas For Tolkien, anything after Chaucer was too recent, I believe.

Prince North Læraðr

@b_jonas Yup. It's the first Protestant church built in Rome though, which was cool

I had to fact check myself, it is NOT the first Protestant church in Italy

Just the first in Rome

Tsundoku

10:54 PM

I have never heard of Lauridsen or Gretchaninoff.

Prince North Læraðr

The former is a popular modern choral composer, and the latter is a Russian composer

I'd never heard of them until this year too though :P

Tsundoku

Yes, I found them on Wikipedia.

Alex

@verbose There actually is some arithmetic. It gives the census for the individual tribes and then the total for the whole nation. You’re supposed to follow along with a calculator to make sure it’s accurate.

b_jonas

follow along with a calculator? is that some kind of talmudic tradition?

Tsundoku

There is a trick to remember how many Bible books there are in each group; it's in one of my Tumblr reviews.

Alex

11:03 PM

@b_jonas No, I just meant that if you are reading the Bible you should check the numbers with a calculator. Sometimes you may be surprised, e.g. Genesis 45.

(Though for that one you may not need a calculator, as the figures there are small.)

Tsundoku

I was just wondering about that: who needs a calculator to add 2 + 5 or 3 + 5? (Although you never know with the younger generations :-P )

Prince North Læraðr

2+5 is 25, anyone can do that

Alex

@Tsundoku Which makes the discrepancy all the more interesting.

b_jonas

@Tsundoku us mathematicians. we don't know concrete calculations like that anymore. we have computers to do that work.

11:16 PM

(that's an exaggeration, I can compute 2+5 or 3+5 approximately, but only to a digit and a half precision, for more precision I need a computer)

Tsundoku

@PrinceNorthLæraðr '2'+'5'=25'

Alex

@Alex Correction, 46

Prince North Læraðr

Numbers are just arbitrary symbols anyways amirite

Tsundoku

Anyway, I need to go to bed because it's past midnight in Rome.

Prince North Læraðr

Way to call me out 'doku

Tsundoku

11:19 PM

Going to count some sheep ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

you do that, I need to finish a paper

Tsundoku

I'll try not to snore too loudly, then.

Prince North Læraðr

Yeah I can hear you snoring next to me already from across the world

DLosc

11:36 PM

@Alex What's the issue there? I skimmed it and didn't notice anything odd.

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr yes, when I break out into numbers, there's usually an exodus

DLosc

My favorite biblical number fact is that if you do the math, it seems Methuselah (Noah's grandfather) died in the same year as the Flood. Coincidence? Hmm.

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Ha!

Alex

@DLosc I originally wrote the wrong Chapter number. It’s actually Chapter 46.

Prince North Læraðr

Also, Verbose, I really liked your question on Music Theory SE! I really do feel like we need to explore more music beyond traditional Western music

verbose

11:42 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr thanks! Which one? I have two rn

I also have four answers there. It's pretty Western-centric, not very much about Indian classical music at all, so I don't go there very often

DLosc

@Alex Ah, so there was a numerical discrepancy. Got it. ;)

verbose

d'you have questions/answers there?

Alex

@DLosc Basically, the number listed for Jacob’s progeny seems to be off by one.

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Your most recent question, this one

verbose

@Alex book was prolly written by a computer scientist, then

Prince North Læraðr

11:48 PM

@verbose Oh no, non-Western music is unfortunately currently outside the realm of my knowledge. I hope to be able to study it in the future though. I've grown to appreciate music of different cultural backgrounds and I've been more and more inspired to incorporate different styles and characteristics authentically into my writing

I just sometimes think music theory gets so boggled in 18th century Western theory that people often forget that there are rich music theories in other cultures, notably in places like India

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I didn't mean non-Western Q&A's, just whether you had any contributions to that site

DLosc

@Alex I was about to say that I'm more concerned with the shockingly small number of daughters that seem to have been born into Jacob's family. But then it occurred to me that any married daughters probably weren't counted because they would've stayed with their husbands in Canaan. So I guess that's less surprising than I thought at first.

Prince North Læraðr

Oh, no. I'm pretty inactive on that site, I was just peaking

verbose

two questions, two answers. About the same as me

Prince North Læraðr

I have like one question I think on there

I was peaking to see if there was something I can answer, I'm hoping to start contributing more to the site

The one on the whole learning how to play keyboard/sing/beatbox is sort of interesting

verbose

11:53 PM

oh wait no, you have two questions and zero answers

Prince North Læraðr

Oh that's right, I forgot about the trumpet question

b_jonas

I have none. I have posts on lots of sites but I can't have one everywhere.

Prince North Læraðr

Part of me cringes a bit on people who just... have such a flippant attitude towards music

The way that the first answer made it sound like it was os easy to get to a mediocre level of singing kind of ticks me, as a singer

b_jonas

that's one of the sites that are mostly for professionals, unlike Lit or Sci Fi

Prince North Læraðr

First off, tutorship isn't something that should get added later, it should come first. Once you at least have a basic understanding of how to practice, you can go from there and if you want to improve more then you can resume lessons.

Alex

11:57 PM

@DLosc Perhaps one of our learned mathematicians can calculate the odds of 2/70 being girls?

DLosc

@Alex Well, that depends--do we want the odds of exactly 2 being girls, or the odds of 2 or fewer being girls?

b_jonas

@DLosc nah, there's barely a difference between those

Prince North Læraðr

Piano is a bit easier to "self-learn" - it depends on what you're trying to do, but as long as you're not practicing like crazy or trying to play anything crazy, you're usually not at a high risk of injury

b_jonas

@Alex I respectfully decline because I know it's not worth to get into debates about the Bible

DLosc

I respectfully decline because probability wasn't one of my favorite math subjects :P

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